


lover's walk

by mollivanders



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all the time they’ve spent together (spent apart), Mary thinks she shouldn’t be this nervous about kissing him.</p><p>Richard, she knew how to kiss, all formalism and stiff obligation. Sybil she kisses tenderly, wistfully, and Edith she does not kiss at all. Once, she kissed Lavinia goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lover's walk

**Author's Note:**

> Fandom: Downton Abbey  
> Rating: PG  
> Characters: Mary/Matthew  
> Author's Note: Word Count - 738. Through Season 2.  
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

For all the time they’ve spent together (spent apart), Mary thinks she shouldn’t be this nervous about kissing him.

Richard, she knew how to kiss, all formalism and stiff obligation. Sybil she kisses tenderly, wistfully, and Edith she does not kiss at all. Once, she kissed Lavinia goodbye.

But in the weeks – days – leading up to the wedding, she and Matthew steal more moments than she can count, now they’re allowed. It’s usually him first, on their walks around the park or to the village, but Mary always feels the eyes of her family or the villagers on them and holds back.

She gets her chance one night when she and Matthew linger behind the party returning to Downton, his gait slowed by the cane she insisted he take.

“Three days,” she says brightly and Matthew looks at her, happiness flitting around his eyes.

(She is very curious, if she admits it. What he is like when no one is looking.)

“Are you very excited?” he asks and Mary’s heart picks up a new pace. She does not know what he thinks, but she is less prepared than she thought she’d be.

“I don’t think it’s quite proper to comment on such things,” she says instead, an old, haughty note in her voice and Matthew has the decency not to mock her. He does stop to look at her in the darkness and Mary suddenly feels bare before him, wonders why the rest of the group had to walk so quickly.

(She is alone, in the dark, with Matthew.)

“You and I,” he says, and then pauses, looking away at the party. “We are past such things, are we not?”

She is tempted, for just a moment, to reply with a quip and catch up with the others, but her bold streak wins out. He looks rather striking in his suit, and he needs a haircut before the ceremony, but Mary thinks, despite herself, that she likes him like this. Ruffled and gentlemanly, altogether.

The old Mary would be _horrified_.

So she takes a step closer to him and when he doesn’t show alarm, she reaches a hesitant hand up to cup his face, leans in to kiss him.

(He does not seem alarmed in the slightest.)

Actually, she can feel his pulse under her hand and when he pulls her closer - _she is his stick_ , she remembers – the cane balances between them, his hands on her waist and warm in the cool spring air.

She is just thinking this is nice and not at all nerve-wracking when gently, he opens her mouth with his own. Suddenly Mary can feel every nerve in her body light up and she worries for a second she’s gripping him too hard, but he seems fine, more than fine, because she can taste sweetness and a bit of the smoke from his cigarette earlier, and the world spins for a moment before she realizes he’s dipping her backwards.

The old Mary would be _outraged_ by now.

Before she’s ready for it to be over, it is, and Matthew’s holding her hands, a smirk playing on his lips while she catches her breath.

(Three days, she thinks. She’ll have to wait that long.)

It is much harder to catch moments here and there in the remaining days, and while Mary has plenty to occupy her mind, she finds herself stealing glances at Matthew when they are not directly engaged. His new habit of cigarettes draws her gaze directly to his mouth, and she catches herself visualizing the other night more than once.

Edith mocks her the day before the wedding for being so obvious about liking Matthew, and when Mary prepares a sharp retort, Grandmama interjects.

“If you were marrying Matthew, you’d look at him like that too,” Grandmama says with a look at Mary, who smiles into her napkin and catches Matthew’s gaze.

(It seems she’s not the only one looking.)

But after the ceremony, when everyone has finally left them alone, and Mary feels her nerves building again, Matthew takes her hand and raises it to his mouth, presses a soft kiss to it.

“I think you may ask me anything you like now,” she tells him, thinking of their conversation, and Matthew smiles.

“I think,” he says in that tone she knows by heart, “nobody is watching us now.”

Even the old Mary, she thinks later, would be impressed.

_Finis_


End file.
